Thursday, August 13, 2015

Stuff ... cracks.

At some point my mother had her gall bladder removed. She said there was a tiny spot of cancer in her colon. My brother was with her for the surgery and a few days of recuperation. Her sister spent some time with her helping too. My mother insisted that I not come. It was too small a thing. Easily addressed by those close at hand. My mother and I were not close. We were not close and that has been one of the great sadnesses of my life. I do not understand how such a thing can happen, just that it did. My mother said the doctor got "excellent margins" when he removed that tiny spot of cancer and my brother who spoke with the doctor confirmed the truth of that. My mother was not always reliable with the information she chose to share ... that's my mother. My mother did not like "negative" words "spoken" in to her life. Positivity was part of her religious sensibilities. That became quite frustrating for me. My mother was not open to discussion on a topic that she considered resolved. Maybe most of us are not. I asked her what sort of follow up her "tiny spot" would require. She said none. The tiny spot was gone. (Halleluia.)

During the time I spent with her in the weeks preceding her death I learned that quite a bit of the colon and her gall bladder had been removed when "the tiny spot of cancer" was seen to. So many details from that time are a blur, so I'm not sure if I read a report about her medical adventures or if maybe her sister gave me the update.

I am guessing when I say Momma 's liver cancer was actually colon cancer metastasized to the liver. Her tumors showed up on some imaging that was part of figuring out what was going on with her heart after the event which took her from a primary care check up to the hospital emergency room. She was not a candidate for any of the usual therapies - no chemo, no radiation, inop ... . She past quickly, within 6 weeks of the diagnosis.

Tommy and I thought we were dealing with the onset of dementia when (exactly a year earlier) we moved her over near him. He noticed her becoming more and more forgetful, sleepy and disoriented frequently, crankier then usual (which I couldn't attest to because she was always short with me). The rapid weight loss was a huge concern to me, she hadn't been significantly overweight before. She chalked it up to having nothing to do but walk (the halls) in the senior living apartments that we found for her. When I saw her I was surprised that her stomach seemed swollen ... I mean she had lost a lot of weight, but she looked like skin and bones and tummy. Plus she slept on her sofa during the day with her feet up on a foot stool and was awake pacing on her balcony during the night (her neighbors told me that when I was staying in her apartment). I couldn't call her without waking her up.

Tommy and I both were concerned about the dementia. I was sad to see her in such a state, but honestly, and somewhat to my shame, I was afraid for how that might be played out in my later years. When I read up on Alzheimer's research I was thinking of myself as much as her. While her heart troubles came on suddenly, the forgetfulness and fuzziness seemed to be progressive. I wasn't really even sure that she wasn't just "playing" with us on the memory problems. When I came to stay with her I knew it wasn't a problem of Alzheimer's, but I was unable to understand the process of her mental shut down. As I research some of the info "out there" on secondary liver cancer I see that her symptoms were textbook.

Hepatic Encephalopathy

Encephalopathy means brain disease. Hepatic encephalopathy is brain damage from liver causes; symptoms include behavior changes, confusion, a change in sleep patterns (night-day reversal is common) poor judgment and slow speech and movement. A hand flapping movement called asterixis or trembling hands can occur, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Depression and anxiety are also common side effects. Hepatic encephalopathy can progress to coma and death.

The oncologist said the cancer in Momma's liver was the size of a cantaloupe. She said that it was doubtful that it was primary liver cancer and I could have that tested if I needed to know. She said that the testing would be painful for my mother, also (if I remember correctly, and I might not be) that the testing process, acquiring tissue for a biopsy, could be fatal. I declined on my mother's behalf.

Hepatic encephalopathy is deterioration of brain function that occurs because toxic substances normally removed by the liver build up in the blood and reach the brain.

I think the tiny spot grew to cause secondary Liver Cancer. My guess is it had already made the leap to her liver and probably elsewhere in the body systems. At the Hospice House they did, at my request, a test which indicted extremely high markers for bone cancer. Poor baby. I am sad that we didn't have the type of relationship which would allow me to "tend" to her better. I don't feel that I left any avenues to a close relationship with Momma unexplored. I was occasionally exasperated with "us" but I came to feel mostly compassion towards Momma. There wasn't a road leading to a place for us.

I am glad she didn't have to live to see another of her sons buried. I am glad that she is well now. She did have what seemed to me an almost miraculous rebound the day before she died. For a few minutes she seemed entirely lucid. She seemed like younger her, maybe the 35 year old version of her. I was amazed to recognize her, and it makes me smile to recall her crisp, almost businesslike manner. "I know I am dying." she said. "Look after your brother."

I have more I'd like to express here ... just not now. It is funny to see how the experiences of our lives, or what we make of them, how they manipulate some of our other important relationships.

This is so much on my mind today - partly because I notoriously push grief away and it's catching up with me - but mostly because I have a task which requires me to search through my laptop for stored pictures from the last couple of years.

The stuff on the past couple of years to - do list is complete. Now I get to make choices about what comes next for me. I am fortunate.

My husband died of colon cancer that had metastasized to the liver. He had a tumor removed from his colon and at that time they saw that the liver was full of cancer. He lived nine months, with chemo treatments during six of the months. He had those symptoms that you describe, but we knew the cause, the ammonia buildup in the brain from the liver failure. I'm sorry you couldn't be let in on your mother's illness; it's good that you did your own research afterward to know for your own sake what your heredity is...

My mom preferred, geez, I don't know how to describe it. It's not that I don't believe God can do whatever God wants to do. I really believe that. My mom believed that whatever she asked, and I do mean whatever, once sprinkled "with Jesus name" ... was going to happen. Any thing "spoken" contrary to that infused a corrupting disbelief and spoiled the brew. There was no room in her formula for "me". My lack of faith seemed to be even more powerful then the God of all creation ... my shortcomings were "trump". Pretty bizarre, huh? ... Best to keep me out of the loop. I think that might have been her process, but I really don't know. I do feel that Momma is 'whole" now, or will be. I'm not as sure about how God does things as a lot of people seem to be.

I'm keeping a pretty close watch on my colon. What may be is entirely in His hands and I', peace-filled about it.

Quotes I like

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you. ~ Augustine

Quotes I like

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." ~ Mark Twain

"Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul. " ~ Augustine

"That we come as a seed of who we might be and make choices which tend ourselves as we grow towards who we are becoming. so ... the idea of where we spend our time and collect our thoughts is pretty consequential ". ~unknown

"How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can." ~ Babe Ruth

"Often we don't even discover them as memories until years later when they emerge, not as they were, but as they have become as our souls expand enough to value what we thought at the time was dross as the real gold of our lives". ~ Gerard Van der Leun

“It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. ” ~ George MacDonald, Phantastes

“from what we cannot hold the stars are made” ~ W.S.Merwin

“we travel far and fast and as we pass through we forget where we have been” ~ W.S.Merwin

"Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.

"Always do what you are afraid to do." ~ Emerson

“Sometimes you will never know the value of something,until it becomes a memory.” ~ Dr. Seuss

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." ~ Vaclav Havel

"Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world: all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it....Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world he is the father of modern physics-indeed, of modern science altogether." ~Einstein

"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds." ~John Maynard Keyes

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away." ~ George Eliot

"If nothing saves us from death, may love at least save us from life." - Pablo Neruda

"Yes I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." ~ Oscar Wilde

"God bears His soul in the words of His book - thereby He draws me to Himself." ~ Gary Spooner

"Negative capability...is being capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." ~ John Keats

"If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?" ~ Merida from BRAVE

"There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. That destiny is not our own, but I know better. Our fate lives within us, you only have to be brave enough to see it." ~ Merida from BRAVE

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death’s pulses, death’s heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

"Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart." ~ Kahlil Gibran

“It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.” ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

"Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, nourishment of mind by His truth, purifying of imagination by His beauty, opening of the heart to His love, and submission of will to His purpose. All this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of all expressions of which we are capable." ~ William Temple

“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.” ~ Norman Schwarzkopf

"True leadership only exists if people follow when they have the freedom not to." ~Jim Collins

"The practice of leadership is not the same as the exercise of power."~James MacGregor Burns

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

"To contemplate Supreme Truth is like looking upon the face of God; it is consumation and therefore extermination, while learning, which is an endless extenstion of conscious activity, is the striving after, but not the acquisition of truth." ~Martin Nozick (Miquel De Unamuno*The Agony of Belief)

"Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?" ~ Tennyson

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.” ~Bonhoeffer

"For my part I know nothing with certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream." ~ Vincent Van Gogh

“These are the days that must happen to you.” ~ Whitman

"We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well." ~George MacDonald

"Love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god." ~ Dennis De Rougemont

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” ~ Dr.Seuss

"All that we may see or seem, is but a dream within a dream." ~ Edgar Allan Poe

“The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.” ~ Whitman

“Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?” ~ Walt Whitman

"Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood. " ~ Norman Cousins

“Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.” ~ Louise Erdrich, Tales of Burning Love

“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.” ~ Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves

“I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science. It has no beginning and no end.” ~ Stephen Hawking

“They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness” ~ Louise Erdrich

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty." ~ Einstein

“There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion that if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together” ~ H.W. Longfellow

“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.” Marcel Proust

"To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life." ~ T. S. Eliot

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it." ~ Buddha

"The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart." ~ Buddha

"Nothing happens unless first a dream." ~ Carl Sandburg

"We can do no great things - only small things with great love." ~ Mother Teresa

"Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself." ~ Plato

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." ~Mother Teresa

"We see things as we are, not as they are. " ~ Leo Rosten

"I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. " ~ Leo Rosten

“I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.” ~ T.S. Eliot

" Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground. " ~ Dante

Personality implies that as this person: I am completely determined on every side and so finite, yet nonetheless I am simply and solely self-relation, and therefore in finitude I know myself as something infinite, – universal, and free. Philosophy of Right (1821) ~ GWF Hegel ... and ... ‘Person’ is essentially different from ‘subject’, since ‘subject’ is only the possibility of personality; every living thing of any sort is a subject. A person, then, is a subject aware of this subjectivity, since in personality it is of myself alone that I am aware. Philosophy of Right (1821) ~ Hegel ... and ... ‘Be a person and respect others as persons.’ Philosophy of Right (1821) ~ Hegel

"I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." ~ Galileo

"Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day." ~ Elie Wiesel (Dawn)

"Think higher, feel deeper." ~ Elie Wiesel

"One person of integrity can make a difference." ~ Elie Wiesel

"Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds." ~ Elie Wiesel

"... Their words aren't heard, their voices aren't recorded, but their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere..." Ps 19:3-4 ~ King David

"I distinctly remember forgetting that." ~ Clara Barton

"This constellation in the dark - grace, thanksgiving, joy - it might be like that - reaching for the stars. So hard. So hard." ~ Ann Voskamp

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life." ~ Liz Gilbert

"If you want to be happy, be." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." ~ Albert Camus

“Forbid us something, and that thing we desire” ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

'There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. -Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." ~ Seneca

"Never take counsel of your fears." ~ General Stonewall Jackson

"the truth is, everyone is going to hurt you...you just got to find the ones worth suffering for..." ~Bob Marley

"A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil."-~Victor Hugo

"He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end." Harry Emerson Fosdick

"The difficulty in life is the choice." - George A Moore

"... who would not, finding a way, break loose from hell ... and boldly venture to whatever place farthest from pain?" - John Milton (Paradise Lost)

"If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise." - Robert Fritz

"Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable." - Sir Francis Bacon

"There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it's easy." - Richard Bach

"The future is not a result of choices among alternate paths offered by the present, but a place that is created ... created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination." - Richard Bach

"Honor isn't about making the right choices. It's about dealing with the consequences." - Richard Bach

"Some choices we live not once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Instead of looking at life as a narrowing funnel, we can see it ever widening to choose the things we want to do, to take the wisdom we've learned and create something." - Liz Carpenter

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." Neil Peart

"In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." - Victor Frankl

" The last of human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." - Victor Frankl

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." - John Wayne

"For what is the best choice for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to acheive ... we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing." - Aristotle

Quotes I like:

"The march of improvement in any given field is always marked by periods of inactivity and then by sudden bursts of energy which revolutionize existing methods sometimes in a day." ~ George Eastman

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a single pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives." ~Henry David Thoreau

"The Art of Thinking is the art of being one's self and this art can only be learned if one is by one's self." ~Ernest Dimnet

'It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling -- and indeed healthy -- to ask why you have been given so much." ~ Condoleeza Rice (commencement speech at University of Alabama

"... life does not consist mainly -- or even largely -- of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thougths that is forever blowing through one's head. " ~ Mark Twain

"It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory--and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making." ~ Mark Twain

"God's gift to you is life itself. What you do with it is your gift to God." ~ Leo Buscaglia

"Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. ~ T.S. Eliot

"For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously." Also; "A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

''I would finish hoeing my garden.'' ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams." ~ Thoreau

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." ~ Thoreau

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." ~ Thoreau

"I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now." ~ Thoreau

"It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil." ~ Thoreau

"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment." ~Thoreau

"I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark." ~ Thoreau

"I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid." ~ Thoreau

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." ~ Thoreau

"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood." ~ Thoreau

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready." ~ Thoreau

"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes." ~ Thoreau

"No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well." ~ Thoreau

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." ~ Thoreau

There's enough poison in that drink to kill an army platoon. Good thing I'm a marine." - chuck/tv

"Hell, there are no rules here- we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas A Edison

"Do more than belong, participate. Do more than care, help. Do more than believe, practice. Do more than be fair, be kind. Do more than forgive, forget. Do more than dream, work." - W. A. Ward"

"Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all." - Socrates in The Peaceful Warrior

"Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try." which is Yoda from "The Empire Strikes Back"

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude." - Denis Waitley

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy." - R.L. Stevenson

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S. Eliot

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run" ~Thoreau

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." - Abraham Lincoln

"Who so loves believes the impossible.” - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, then to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it." - Colin Powell

"The freedom to pursue an aesthetic quality in life is an added dimension, like being able to fly where others walk." - Truman Capote

"Do you have the patience to wait til your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?" - Lao Tzu

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." Billy - age 4

"Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve." - Tom Landry

...and more favorite quotes...

"But the dream is never forgotten, only put aside and never out of reach: Where once the dream connected boys with the world of men, now it reconnects men with the spirit of boys." ~ John Thorn

“My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.” ― Hermann Hesse

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” ~ Oscar Wilde

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length." ~ Robert Frost

"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog." ~ Jack London

"It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us." ~ John Ruskin

No more is it a question of speaking of space and light: the question is to make space and light, which are there, speak to us." ~ Merleau-Ponty

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." ~ Dr. ML King

"Originality is... a by-product of sincerity." ~Marianne Moore

"Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together." - Yo-Yo Ma

"Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you." - Marsha Norman

"After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb." - Nelson Mandela

"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? " - Carl Sagan